According to a report by the Iranian state media outlet (IranNuc.ir), there will be a release of important news on the progress of nuclear enrichment at the Fordow facility soon.

The report states:

The West is still in shock from the recent announcement by the Iranian officials on the nuclear front, but officials indicate that soon the West will receive a bigger blow.

On February 15, Iranian officials announced a series of nuclear achievements: loading the Tehran reactor with domestic nuclear fuel plates; an increase of 3000 centrifuges at the Natanz facility; and the installation of a new generation of centrifuges at Natanz which can increase the production of enriched uranium by 50 percent.

Although the announcement that the official start of the full enrichment at the Fordow facility was expected last Wednesday, that announcement was delayed to a later date.

However, it seems now the announcement is close, and Iranian experts believe that if the announcement is made prior to the upcoming round of talks it could have a significant effect on the negotiations.

The report states that one diplomat claimed the reason for not announcing the official operation at Fordow was to keep the West in suspense in expectation of another surprise.

The report states that two batches of 174 centrifuges each are enriching uranium at a 20 percent level at the Fordow. The facility, which can house 3000 centrifuges, is built deep into a mountain on a Revolutionary Guards’ base near the city of Qom. It is believed that the site cannot be destroyed with the current bunker-buster bombs kept in the U.S. military’s arsenal.

Israel has warned that the relocation of the 20 percent enrichment stock from Natanz to the Fordow facility, along with the new facility enriching uranium to 20 percent, could be defined as the “Zone of Immunity”: this implies that Iran’s nuclear program would become immune to any attack, and Iran could enrich further to weaponization grade within weeks.

Iran currently has enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs, and continues its illicit nuclear activities despite the four different sets of UN sanctions already in place.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

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1.
Frumious Falafel

And yet during all these incredible revelations, Obama still appears to “want to talk.” If this was about a less dangerous topic one could make a huge number of jokes about his. But alas, despite the USA’s apparent warming up to the Israelis militarily, the fact is that Obama is still the man at the top.

From what I can tell the US Military is, as usual, grudging or otherwise, supportive of Israel and understands her need to not “just lie down and die.” But as the Military is not a separate arm in this country, and is ruled by people like Panetta, a pure Californian politician — and as I can think of nothing positiver to say about him, the sentence will just have to end there. So we have Panetta and Obama looking much more closely at the election than at Israel per se. But if they “screw up” and allow Iran to get in a first hit … a first NUCLEAR strike at Israel, then that will not look so good for Obama. So he plays this ridiculous little tightrope game to somehow shoe the American voters that “He doesn’t want the Israelis to just die,” but “he doesn’t want the USA to become involved either.”

And this brings me to something I’ve never understood: Israel, as a matter of policy will NOT ALLOW ANYONE, FROM ANY COUNTRY aside their own to fight in her wars, period. Anti-Semites tend to forget this little item. So even IF Obama sent over an aircraft carrier and wanted Israel to induct all the soldiers, the Israelis would politely say “no thank you.”

What they will take are armaments, and data: such as the kind now being triangulated by an X-band radar sites in Turkey and one in the Negev. Together these allow Israel the most possible lead time if Iran launches, despite and irrespective of the vociferous objections of the Erdogan (thankfully the Turkish Military — whatever is left of them — are still friendly towards Israel). I suppose one can say that at least on the one point Obama used whatever muscle he had with NATO to ensure that the Turks would allow this to go ahead without problem — let’s just hope if and when it is really needed (I know it has worked in tests).

But you know, over on Ledeen’s page, some commentators have been bringing up the point that the entire (Israeli) strike (’cause I’m not holding my breath on the Americans doing anything, unless the IRI really does something really reallystupid) does not have to be 100% from the air. That working with agents already on the ground integrated with anti-regime forces, Israel may decide it’s better to integrate their forces in a joint attack — especially against a highly difficult site like Fordow.

Perhaps a series of bunker busters or perhaps a squad of “SEAL TEAM” like men would assault the entrance and lay massive charges, perhaps driving a HUGE truck in to possible bottle the whole thing up (including anyone trapped inside — although there may be emergency exists — generally Israel attempts to time thing in order to minimize civilian casualties, like say janitors). In any case, whether laid by man, or whether on the back of this massive truck that was just backed into the mountain entrance, this monster charge could be detonated from anywhere. Further more teams on the ground could direct GPS tracking lasers for other axillary entrances for the Jets to potentially explode first, as one all the major escape hatches are sufficiently closed. a main charge at the mount of Fordow could (and should) destroy huge numbers of centrifuges. Also if any radiation is let loose, it would be in Iran’s best interest to keep the site bottled up. But I doubt we’ll see that happen. And that might cause a mass of people to flee the area.

Well, either way, we really seem to be coming down to d-day as measured in weeks and months, not years.

This author, Reza Kahlili wrote a top-notch book about his time in the Iranian National Guards while working for the USA. So far as we know, he is the only man to have done so for so long and made it out alive. His book answer many questions that people often bring up like, “well why can’t we just rely on ‘MAD’ to work?” These and other reasonable questions are clearly answered in his book, “A Time To Betray” which took me (A slow reader) only 2 days to read.

I just don’t think Israel will put a special ops team on the ground at fordow — the logistics are impossibly difficult and they would have to work with opposition groups like the MEK which is itself anti american and anti Israeli. They are probably thinking of an air strike on all targets including Iran, hizbollah and hamas. Israel has to take out the lions share of Hizbollah’s long range scuds at the same time they hit Iran’s nuclear facility or risk casualties in the thousands. Back in 2006 they destroyed hizbollah’s best rockets in the first 15 minutes of the war and this time around hizbollah has more accurate scuds which can devastate Tel aviv. Frumious, I don’t believe you know all the logistics involved. The delta force could probably pull off an operation this complex and they are probably the only force on the planet that can pull it off successfully.